The Girl from the Garden Read online

  On one of those frenzied days before the wedding celebration, Asher decided to send Ibrahim ahead to run the business of the caravansary, while he remained behind to work out the mathematics of yields and taxes. All day he tried to drown out the incessant noise of the women’s talk and laughter by closing his study’s windows and turning on the gramophone, but by noon he realized that his chances of thinking straight were better in the hubbub of the marketplace than in his own home.

  Asher peeked his head out of the door and looked down the breezeway in both directions to see if a wayward aunt might trap him with an offer of advice, or a cousin might entangle him in an hour’s worth of synagogue gossip about so-and-so’s daughter, but it was after lunch and all the women had retired to the five-doored sitting room to rest during the afternoon heat. He stepped gingerly out of his study and quietly closed the door.

  Asher walked across the courtyard to the stables, lost in his own thoughts, when he heard a voice singing and looked up to see the colors of the afternoon a brighter orange. He felt the depth of the August heat, and the scent of the dying roses permeated the air. His cousin’s new bride, Kokab, stood in the pool of the fountain, the water around her a more magnificent blue than he remembered. Her skirt was tied up in a knot above her knees, her calves glistening wet in the shallow water. Red apples floated in that pool, bobbed in the small ripples of her motion, collected around her, floated away from her grasp. She stood up to rewrap her chador around her waist and when she bent over again to wash the apples, the tips of her thick, black hair touched the water.

  She sang and his eyes followed the sound to the smooth, white skin of her throat, to the rise and fall into the white valley between her breasts. He saw her, and her beauty burned into his flesh a yearning deeper than anything he had ever felt before. In this pause in eternity, Asher felt at once the promise of his own death and the beckoning of his desire. Within that moment, Kokab looked up to meet his gaze. Asher could not move. He stared at her in that fountain, trapped in the simple notes of her solitude, and knew that he would give it all, the wealth, the future of his progeny, the honor of his name, to hold this woman he could not touch. He stood thus, frozen in the wake of that afternoon when his eyes were opened and he perceived with terror his vulnerability to desire. She looked at him with her black animal eyes, tilted her head slightly, then went back to her task, as though it had only been a sparrow she had witnessed, a dust-covered sparrow hopping in the dirt of the yard. He turned and walked quickly to the stables, his body hot, now with shame.

  Though later he forgot how he managed the horse or led it past Kokab and into the streets, Asher soon found himself riding at the foothills of the mountain. A cloud of dust rose behind him. His body rose and fell, the sun beat down on him, his muscles taut. His ears heard nothing but the sound of her voice singing, his eyes saw nothing but the indifference in her eyes, and no matter how hard he rode that horse, his thoughts stayed trapped in that moment in the courtyard, where he imagined how he should have walked toward the fountain, pushed her down into the water, grabbed her bared shoulder, pulled her hair, forced her to turn those black animal eyes away from him with something more than just indifference. He buried his heels into the side of the horse and thought of the soft of her flesh bruised, the white of her skin revealing the evidence of his hurt pride, the spreading deep purple of his shame across her cheeks, and when in the cool of the evening he was spent in his rage, he trotted home slowly and dreamed of the apologies of his lips against the lobe of her ear as they sat, hidden deep in the recesses of that garden.

  He did not see her again until the week of the wedding celebrations. That Monday, all the members of his family, his distant cousins, his childhood friends, arrived with musicians who plucked the strings of the kamancheh and tar, wailed of love through the ney, beat deep rhythms with dafs raised over their heads. He sang and danced with the guests. He drank glasses of wine and spoke to his cousins and uncles about the future.

  Standing to accept the blessings of an old aunt, Asher saw Kokab across the courtyard, leaning against the trunk of a poplar tree, distant from the crowd, gazing at the last brilliant streak of red against the dusk blue skies. Suddenly, the blood in Asher’s veins turned to fire and crept into his hands, up toward his face, and he feared that the old woman clutching his hand and talking about his future joy and the merits of his young bride might feel the change in his body and know his shame. He wrestled his hand from hers, smiled and thanked her profusely for her kindness, then stole away. He stood hidden amidst the crowd, among a hundred faces that talked and laughed.

  The entirety of a courtyard stretched between himself and Kokab, but Asher felt as though he were close enough to feel her breath faintly on his skin. He turned away, for fear of being caught in such shameful circumstances, at his own engagement party, staring at a woman belonging to another man. His cousin Eliyahoo lurked somewhere in that garden lit by lanterns, his disembodied head floating through Asher’s mind, a large, round face with fleshy lips, an insolent nose red with wine, teeth already yellowed by tobacco. Asher remembered seeing him undressed at the hammam. How a man with arms like a woman thinks himself worthy of holding such a wife, Asher wondered.

  Asher looked up again and in that moment, Kokab turned in his direction. She met his eyes and held him there, terrified and exhilarated, in her gaze. A circle of dancing women came between them and she continued to look at him. Asher looked at her, too, and the whole world spun madly about them, the garden, the voices, the music, the dusk-darkened treetops overhead, the first few stars appearing in the night skies. From above the heads of the dancing women, Asher watched Kokab’s stillness, this woman who stood alone in contemplation first of the setting sun, and now him, this woman who remained untouched by the joy and frenzy of all the other guests.

  Then, Kokab was gone. She disappeared into the crowd and he looked for her until darkness descended completely and the lanterns betrayed too many shadows. He could no longer discern one face from another. He mumbled formalities in response to blessings, then found himself carried by the crowd toward the door leading into the tight streets, pushed along by words of encouragement and hands slapping his back. He walked behind his mother, who held a tray of jewels, gifts for the bride, over her head as the procession poured through the door of their home, loud with song, and turned in the direction of the bread maker’s home. A few times, he glanced over his shoulder as if to turn back, but the hands were quick to hold his elbows and a chorus of promises to respond that this marked the beginning of a joyous life. Before he knew it, he stepped through the narrow doorway of the bread maker’s home and there sat Rakhel in a chair placed in the center of the room, surrounded by women who burst into loud ululations and men who whistled and musicians who took up their tune.

  Asher stood frozen before Rakhel, staring at her as though she were a stranger. She looked up to see his expression, her own gaze full of panic, before she looked down to her hands clasped in her lap. With her head tilted down, she glanced up again and he nodded his head, but before he could smile to reassure her that he recognized her, a group of women surrounded her and began adorning her with the gifts from his family, a gold-threaded shawl on her shoulders, gold bangles from her wrists to her elbows, emerald rings for her fingers, heavy gold trinkets for her hair, and gold coins, one after another, clink, clink, clinking in time to the music, dropped into a bowl placed in her lap.

  Morning came. The men came for him, Ibrahim, his bachelor cousins and boyhood friends. They slapped his face until he opened his eyes and they made him drink hot chai. They laughed and boasted as he groaned with the weight of the previous night still heavy in the pit of his stomach. They rose from the sofre, pulled him up from the floor, and carried him, like a man wounded in battle, to the hammam. In the hammam the men sang loudly and told bawdy jokes and laughed heartily. Asher, too, sang and laughed, but only a part of him sat there in the steam of that afternoon among those young men.

  Another
night passed and another day. The crowd of people filled his sitting room, spilled into the courtyard, wandered to the outer gardens. Family and relatives surrounded him with much commotion until the dusk of that Thursday. Asher stole away from the guests and retreated to his study. He sat behind his desk, his books and abacus before him, the gramophone caught repeating the same three notes of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. His eldest uncle entered his study, stood before his desk and asked, “You are hiding?”

  Asher could not find the words to speak. His uncle patted him on the back and said, “Come, son, there is nothing to fear. Tonight is a night for joy, and tomorrow night, for an even greater joy.” Asher stood absently and allowed the old man to lead him by the hand. They came to a room where Rakhel stood, a window behind her and the setting sun so bright that Asher could see only the eclipse of light behind her darkened body. They led him to her and he stood before her. Without looking at her face, he drew the veil over her eyes, and behind it, in the mesh embroidered with gold thread, she might have been Kokab.

  Soon there will be the prayer, Asher thought. There will be the wine, the ring, the breaking of glass, there will be witnesses and the signing of contracts and the consummation, and tomorrow night, Rakhel’s naked body in my arms and she will be mine and it is not the other, not the one who held my soul in her gaze, who left me trembling. He turned and left the room, walked past the old bread maker, past his uncles, past the singing and clapping guests to the old rabbi who waited beneath the bridal chuppah.

  From beneath the canopy of the chuppah, Asher watched Rakhel’s approach. The women’s ululations pierced the air. The reverberations of their sound weakened his knees. They clapped and sang as Rakhel walked toward him, faceless beneath the veil, one hand held by her widowed aunt, one held by Zolekhah. The two women released their hold. Asher noticed his own rapid breathing. He closed his eyes. Rakhel circled him once and he felt her nearness. Twice, and he smelled the scent of her flesh and of rosewater. She circled him a third time, and he imagined the glance of black animal eyes. A fourth time, and he searched his mind for the recollection of his bride’s eyes, for the eyes of this girl who walked around him. A fifth time and he could not remember the face of the veiled girl at all, not anything of her face. A sixth and he felt overwhelmed with fear. If he could stop the moments from advancing, silence the guests, the rabbi, his own breath, and steal quietly into the night. If he could reach his horse, and lead it softly to the street, into the open fields, over the mountains. If he could just hold this moment, perhaps cast everything into a deep slumber so that he might escape this inescapable dream. He opened his eyes to see Rakhel circle him for the seventh time. Then she stood beside him and someone placed her hands in his own lifeless hands and he felt no heat from either his own flesh, or hers. Nothing burned between them and his body became suddenly drenched with cold sweat and he thought, this, this is my death and he heard words and sipped wine and heard his own voice promise Haray aht m’kudeshet li b’taba’at zo k’dat Moshe v’Yisrael in response and saw his own hand, trembling, place a gold ring on her extended finger and nothing seemed more impossible than what his body had already done, the betrayal of his hands, the betrayal of his voice. Asher heard the rabbi read the ketuba, and then instruct him to drink again and Asher raised a glass of dark wine to his lips and he understood, then, with great awe and terror, that he had deceived himself, and that this treason lurked within his own heart, a thief in the dark night of his own making, the one that will, soon, very soon, raise the sharp blade of his dagger and rend his very soul. That wine burned his throat, and he felt it spread to his heart and to his arms and to his hands, to his fingers and suddenly he felt Rakhel’s hand in his own. He breathed in her scent, this bride who was not the other, and his body betrayed him a third time. He brought down his foot with fury upon the glass, and with the clear sound of its shattering, he felt an intense desire for the veiled girl before him, felt it in his flesh and knew that, this time, there would be a quenching of thirst. Beneath the canopy of the chuppah, made of his father’s tallith, the prayer shawl that held the weight of his father’s hopes and fears and dreams, Asher remembered that the color of the eyes of his new bride was the shade of honey.

  Five

  The day is a uniform gray. The sky still. Mahboubeh sits at the dining table and looks at the naked branches of the trees through the living room window. August is an immeasurable distance from now, she thinks. She rises heavily from the table and walks to the cold fireplace. She takes a book from the mantel and blows the dust from its cover. She returns to the table, sits and closes her eyes, the book resting in her lap. Then she opens the book to a random page and begins reading out loud. “Like Yakov, I am crying, for the beautiful face of Yousseff is my desire. Without you, the city is my prison. Wandering, the mountain and desert are my desire.”

  Mahboubeh closes the book and remembers her father, Ibrahim, reciting these poems, his eyes closed, tears streaming down his face. As a child, she’d steal into his room, hide in a corner and listen to him, the book open in his lap, his head thrust back, reciting, almost singing poetry. When she became older, she learned the poems, too, by heart and wondered if it was the loss of her mother that inebriated her father with such sorrow that he sang from dawn to dusk, lost to the world before him.

  Before her mother’s death, her father was a religious man. Each day, on his way to the caravansary, Ibrahim walked first to the synagogue to bind his arms and place The Word upon his flesh in hope that the light that filtered in through the windows, in that instant, in the next, might illuminate a path. And in the afternoons, after the azan sounded from the minarets, when the other men took their rest either at home, or in the caravansary, their bellies full, tired from the work of the morning, Ibrahim hurried back to the synagogue to find the old rabbi and study with him, argue with him, demand answers for all the questions that harried him night and day.

  And each of those afternoons, on his way back to the caravansary from the synagogue, Ibrahim passed the same dervish, bare chested, hair unkept, who sat shoeless in the shade of a mulberry tree and laughed, spoke to birds, to the tree, to anyone passing, and sang beneath the skies, sang from dawn to dusk and into the night. Ibrahim asked the dervish one day, “What inspires you to sing all day?” The dervish stopped singing and smiled. He held open his empty hands and said, “Wouldn’t you sing, too, if you held all the wealth of this world in the palms of your hands?”

  Ibrahim envied the dervish. Often, he stopped to watch him from behind a wall for a moment and imagined himself as that man, wanting nothing, needing nothing, free of the cumbersome possessions of this world, and free, too, of the yoke of custom, propriety, expectations. But that moment couldn’t have been long, as his older brother waited, frowning because Ibrahim tarried too long with holy men who got fat from the hard work of real men and did nothing all day but fill the heads of the feeble-minded with fantasies.

  Coins and the counting and the goods and the lands and the trades kept Ibrahim busy. Merchants came in from the deserts with their camels, tired and dust covered, and these men led the exhausted animals to water, then drank themselves and came to speak to Ibrahim about their journeys before buying bundles of tobacco and wheat before heading back out, again, into the nothing. Even they, Ibrahim thought to himself, even they are on a path, a meditation in the repetition of the road they travel, learning mirages from reality, disciplined by their thirst and the tiredness in their bones.

  At the end of each day, Ibrahim walked back to his home, its high walls, its large gardens, the rooms of valuable antiques, his beautiful young wife who spoke like a little bird. Then dinner and weekly Sabbaths, weddings, celebrations for the births of sons, or the wild mourning for the dead, or holy days and their circumscribed procedures, which he followed for a while, until that one day when he buried his young wife, and renounced everything.

  Ibrahim did not leave behind much. A crowd of motherless children. A handful of photographs. And th
is book he gave to Mahboubeh before he died. She holds it in her hands, the binding undone, the pages browned, brittled. She touches the green leather cover, traces the engraving on the leather with her finger, the gold of the title long gone. It is a collection of the poems of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muammad Rūmī. Mahboubeh closes her eyes and sees Ibrahim sitting, in his old age, in the corner of his room. He sways gently to the rhythm of his recitation.

  “What did you gain for your sacrifice?” she asks him, but he does not answer her. He keeps his eyes closed, and weeps and sings until he falls into sleep, slumped on a cushion Mahboubeh places for him against the wall.

  Ibrahim awakens in the fraction of the moment before Khorsheed screams. He turns to find his wife’s moonlit face contorted in pain, her body drenched with sweat. He stumbles in the dark to find the matches. She moans. Ibrahim’s fingers shake so violently that the matches fall unlit, one by one, to the dark floor.

  “Hold on, hold on,” he says. Again and again, his hands are like hands in a dream, incapable of steady movement, until, suddenly, the gold spark, the blue hiss and light. He places the candle beside the bed and pulls the blankets off his wife.

  Khorsheed clutches her abdomen with both hands, and rocks side to side on the soaked bedclothes. Ibrahim feels the room pulsate. The walls move perceptibly in toward him, then out again. The ground softens, giving. He kneels beside her bed. “What should I do?” he asks. Khorsheed screams again and grabs the bedclothes with her hands, the muscles of her body tightening. Ibrahim’s whole being halts in this moment, in the stretch of his wife’s open mouth, in the quivering of her thighs, in the arch of her back, the bulging veins of her fists. In this instant, he no longer inhabits his own body but feels the great urgency of her body.